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HIMSS10 Reflections

My subjective take on HIMSS10 is that the general consensus of attendees thought it was a great success (and personally, I want to thank those who allowed me to be involved with the educational outreach in the areas of medical banking and social media).

I agree, but with that said, I offer these observations in the hopes that HIMSS11 can be even better (listed alphabetically):

African American Males: extremely underrepresented as a percentage of the general population. I’m guessing this is representative of the healthcare sector executives as a whole?

Concurrent Legislative, Regulatory and Technology milestones: changes to HIPAA enforcement (ARRA HITECH), and 5010 and ICD-10 conversions are going to make Y2K look like a pastry bake off (sans Carrie Vincent). If you’re organization is not already on top of these topics, MOVE NOW! October 2013 looks to be an interesting month.

Educational seminars: Some not as well attended as one might expect; comments about the desire for digeoing, archiving and webification. There was just so much to choose from it was hard to take in all the quality presentations which were stacked back to back.

Interoperability Showcase (IHE): These demos were well appreciated by the group with which I saw the technologies explained. My mind was hopping re: synergies with this and other networks (CONNECT, SWIFT, etc.)

Wireless: Dan Hesse came to HIMSS10 for the first time pleading the case for wireless in healthcare. Back at the hotel the next morning, however, while tethering my laptop to my Samsung I-730 using a carrier whose name rhymes with horizon, I was unable to get a connection for one hour and a half due to node overload.

After rush hour, connections were fine for the rest of the morning. And the Wi-Fi at the GWCC and adjacent hotels had bottlenecks and were cumbersome to use—especially given the necessary walking between venues. Clearly, the reliable robustness of current networks—for the entire business day in covered geographies—needs to be considered by those scoping the deployment of wireless-based technologies.

Women: need more to be included in the soc media area in next year’s sessions (this was acknowledge by those involved organizing these). @drval’s presentations were well received based on comments which I heard.

Please don’t take these comments as me being overly negative because I’m already looking forward to HIMSS11!